The New Gas Pipe

Today was new gas pipe  day - and i waited on  national grid to arrive - in fact who arrived was their subcontractor
- So to those of you unfamilar with how the UK is working we used to have three groups looking after our utilities then  we sold them all.

Water Companies,  (25)  http://www.water.org.uk/home/resources-and-links/links/water-operators

Electricity Companies (18) http://www.electricity-guide.org.uk/companies.html

Gas Companies           (18) http://www.gas-guide.org.uk/companies.html

So we replaced what efectively were 3 organisations with about 60 with the different regional offices of these boards becoming seperate companies

Then we sold off the infrastructue - gas pipes http://www.gas-guide.org.uk/companies.html

and the Power generators and power lines to http://www.nationalgrid.com/corporate

If you are still awake and want to know what happened to all these companies  have a look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_plc

Anyway the end result is that lots of the old internal jobs in thes boards were sub contracted and I discovered today that in fact my service today was delivered by Morrisons

So living near London I buy my gas from Scottish Power, get it delivered by National gris who use Morrison as their sub contractor.

http://www.morrisonus.com/services/gas.html 

So  today I had two visits from this company  so first I want to thank Alan & Glen and the meter installer Chris for the way tey gor the job done in a professional and friendly way

Here you see the old metal gas pipe it is approximately 60-70mm wide and very substantial. So what happened? And how did they do it it?

First cut the pipe
Second insert a strange mushroom seal
Third introduce a sealing foam typr substance to form a gas type seal
Finally they attach the new plastic pipe which is bright yellow

 very impressive Using this wonderfull device they joined the yellow plastic pipe to old Gas pipe

 

..

Here you see the new plastic pipe going through a small conduit underneath where the wall footings will be this new yellow pipe continues to the garage at the garage it comes up inside a metal pipe to then go through the wall, this section was wrapped with some very heavy duty sticky tape to protct it, so this photo was taken as a work in progress shot

Here you see the old meter has been removed from the old pipe and is resting on the floor the job to fit it was done by Chris who then fixed the meter on to the wall and carefully tedted it for gas leaks to ensure that the connected system was complying with the very strict rules on Gas safety
I was very impressed by the care everyone took
The service i received on the ground proved to be much better than my previous experience of National Grid
maybe Morrisons utlities should become a Consumer Company.

So now we waited for Chris the meter man the second person from Morisons to arrive Chris was the gas fitter who had the job to connect the new mains supply to the existing meter and domestic pipework this included the job to resite the meter.

The gas meter already disconected can be seen on the floor

Here you see the old meter has been removed from the old pipe and is resting on the floor the job to fit it was done by Chris who then fixed the meter on to the wall and carefully tedted it for gas leaks to ensure that the connected system was complying with the very strict rules on Gas safety
I was very impressed by the care everyone took
The service i received on the ground proved to be much better than my previous experience of National Grid
maybe Morrisons utlities should become a Consumer Company.

So that is the end - more or less of the Gas move

All in all I was very pleased with today.
Tomorrow its the start of the process to replace  my unbelievable small water pipe, this only will involve 3 seperate people - but more of that in my next Post tomorrow